It was just after 10 p.m. when Lt. Col. Christopher “Otis” Raible heard the first explosions rumble over Camp Bastion and his fleet of Harrier jets. The Marine pilot had flown a combat mission that night and was heading back to his quarters after dinner to video-chat with his wife.

Now the battle had come to him, right there on the flight line of the heavily fortified headquarters for U.S. Marines and international forces in southwestern Afghanistan.

As insurgents swarmed the hangars, Raible ran to the gunfire with his pistol and a phalanx of Marines to rally the counterattack. Sgt. Bradley Atwell, an electrical systems technician, also sprinted to help.

Neither Marine survived the Sept. 14 assault on Camp Bastion that destroyed six of the Corps’ irreplaceable AV-8B vertical landing fighter jets and heavily damaged two more. Raible and Atwell were buried this week.

They were among more than 100 people, most of them air wing personnel from Yuma, Miramar Marine Corps Air Station and Camp Pendleton, who fought off the infiltrators and prevented a far greater loss of life, according to several eyewitnesses who spoke with U-T San Diego and reports from NATO commanders.

British forces built Camp Bastion in 2006 on a remote patch of desert plain in Helmand province so it would be virtually impregnable in its isolation.

If the Taliban’s video clips purporting to show preparations for the attack are authentic, the assailants plotted in front of a white-board sketch of the base identifying concentrations of aircraft. They rehearsed with wire cutters and fencing, made wills and recorded last words. “We sacrifice ourselves in the name of Almighty Allah,” one said in English on camera.

Then 15 men dressed in a hodge-podge of outdated U.S. Army uniforms crept to the edge of the base closest to the airfield on a moonless night, evading notice by motion detectors, infrared sensors, human and canine patrols and overhead surveillance.

They were armed with automatic rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vests. After blasting through a perimeter wall, the assault force split into three teams and stormed the flight line, firing heavily on tower guards on the way.

Lightfoot called his boss while another Marine alerted higher headquarters to the attack. Maj. Gen. Gregg Sturdevant, commanding general of the Marine air wing deployed in Afghanistan, said a curt “thank you,” and hung up.

All along the airfield, troops came running thinking they were under mortar attack. Aviation mechanics dropped their wrenches and grabbed their rifles. Marines rousted the day shift going bed to bed, gym-goers and the chaplain.

After sheltering briefly in concrete bunkers, they emerged to the sound of enemy AK-47 rifles and PKM machine gun fire and the realization that the attackers were in their midst.

COUNTERATTACK

Raible, commanding officer of Marine Attack Squadron (VMA) 211 out of Yuma, checked on Marines in the barracks. Then he pulled on his body armor and drove toward the gunfire and his burning jet fleet with his aviation maintenance officer and fellow pilot, Maj. Greer Chambless, 35, of Albany, Ga.